“I thank God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you.” (Philippians 1: 3-4)

One of the most beautiful acts we can perform for another is to lift them up in prayer. It is something we can do at any time, in any place, and in doing this we can realize God’s beautiful presence not only in their lives, but also in our own.

In the midst of the “stuff” going on in our lives it can be so difficult to see the truth of God’s blessing and answer. I know this for a fact, for I have felt it on many occasions. The burden seems especially heavy, the sky seems unusually dark and the pain feels as though it has come to stay. In these times, as much as I know God is right here with me at every moment, and I am never alone, it can be tough. We all feel those emotions of being overwhelmed at times, not knowing how we should go forward, or even what words we ourselves would want to say in prayer. Turning to someone we trust to lift us up in prayer can have a powerful effect for us in knowing we are not alone.

There is such power in having others lift us up to God in sincere and faithful prayer. As others lift us up they can see beyond our concerns and burdens and they can see the reality of God’s blessing for us. I have always found it helpful to know that another is “holding that space of perfection, of truth and of healing” until I can see clearly enough to recognize it myself. When we pray for another we have a wonderful opportunity, and responsibility, in holding that sacred space of Gods truth for them. In our prayer for another we are to be crystal clear in our own minds that the power of God is present and moving in that, and every situation. We must absolutely know that the answer to this prayer is already known in the mind of God and that it is revealed to the one for whom we are praying in a way that is clear and that they will be able to recognize. The more belief we, as the prayer, have in the power of God’s blessing, holding that space in absolute truth, the more we will be able to help those with whom we pray begin to see that truth as well.

My friend Rev. Amy Butler has written, “None of us ever does the work of the Gospel community alone.” How true, and how magnificent. With one another, and with God, the miracles we seek for another become a gift to us as well.

Affirmation: “The truth of God’s beautiful miracle is at hand. It is revealed to me perfectly and I am ready to receive it.”

So many people tend to think that when you enter into meditation and into the silence that the silence is empty and a void. That in this silence we are meant to experience nothing and just be. However, nothing could be further from the truth. The silence is not empty, it is filled with God. We live in the midst of silence even though we probably think that we do not. In between each and every one of your thoughts, there is silence. No matter how fast you may think your mind is spinning there is a space between each and ever thought you have. In between each and every word you speak, there is silence. Between each and every breath you take, there is silence. What happens is that because those periods of silence are so little known and experienced by us we miss a great opportunity to experience the fullness of God. When we stop and allow that silence to be elongated, to be stretched out and become a more intentional experience, we are able to absorb more of that beautiful Spiritual presence and truth in our lives.

Why settle for a thimble full of Spirit when you can have a bucketful? Why settle for a little experience of God in your life when you can experience a miracle? Why limit the presence of Divine Action in your life when you can see the unlimited, omnipresence of God/Spirit create for you the life you truly desire?

Dwelling in the stillness, in the silence, is the most pure form of contemplation we can ever experience. The indwelling and all encompassing silence of God being Its fullest self deep inside of us, connecting us fully with the truth of who God has created us all to be.

Presbyterian minister and author James Finley has written, “When engaged in contemplation, we rest in God resting in us.”

“Abide in me as I abide in you. ” (Luke 15:4)

Affirmation: “Each moment is filled with all the wonder of God. When I stop to dwell in one of those moments my life becomes so much richer and more meaningful.”

One of my favorite lyricists, but maybe even one of my favorite theologians, is Oscar Hammerstein II. Mr. Hammerstein has taught us through so many of his words in great musical theatre works how we can live life and live it abundantly. Have a challenge facing us? He would teach us to climb every mountain the challenge has presented before us and to know that we can overcome these obstacles and find new life awaiting us on the other side. (The Sound of Music) Afraid that we are on our own as we live our lives and left to our own devices as we seek to move forward? He would remind us that “You’ll never walk alone,” that Spirit/God is with us each step we take, providing all that we need, just when we need it, to help us get through. (Carousel)

We see so much hate, distrust and abuse going on in our world. Turn on the news and you cannot escape it. Looking at other people and labeling them based on their sexuality, color of skin or country of birth is the worst form of destructive dual thinking. When we have to put other people down so that we can feel better about ourselves we have a serious problem.

All of God’s great creation are fashioned in love and mirror the essence of all that Spirit/God truly is, the unconditional loving, affirming and giving presence of strength, dignity and grace. What seems to be happening is that instead of seeing, really seeing, the truth of who one another are we see the illusion and the false persona of others based on the scenarios we have created in our minds of them by those who taught us to react in a negative way. When we do this we are seeing with dual thinking. They and us. We are also not seeing that which is truly in front of us, we are seeing what others would tell us we are seeing.

Mr. Hammerstein expressed this so beautifully in his song “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught,” from the musical South Pacific. We have allowed ourselves, and then perpetuated the myth, that those unlike what we believe ourselves to be are less than we are. We are taught to hate them, fear them, persecute them and rid them from our midst. We are taught this, this is not how we were born. We were born in perfection, each and every one of us. We have been tainted by false teaching from a very early age that not everyone was born that way.

Mr. Hammerstein asks us to examine our thinking, our beliefs, and so change the course of our prejudiced thinking. He would also invite us to do so before we find that it is too late.

There may always be those around us who would ask us to jump on their bandwagon and believe the lies, the fears, the hates they preach. But we must remain clear and steadfast in knowing these are indeed monstrous lies. With the help of Spirit/God showing us the way to true seeing and relationship we can learn to experience our walk as human beings on this earth with the thoughts of heaven. This is exactly what Jesus, our great teacher and way-shower did. He lived on earth with the thinking of heaven.

Just as we may have been taught one belief we can learn another. We can learn a greater truth that all humanity is precious and valuable to the well being of all. The truth will always overcome the lie and the light will always dispel the darkness.

Thank you, Mr. Hammerstein, that as I listened to your lyrics today I have been enriched and reminded that never walking alone, climbing over any challenge, and changing ones mind will change the world.

Affirmation: Releasing the old false teachings of yesterday opens the space to receive new truths for today. It’s a great way for each of us to do our bit toward changing the world.

I was looking at the liturgical calendar recently. We are in what it says is “Ordinary Time,” this time between Advent and Christmas, and the beginning of Lent with Ash Wednesday. Ordinary Time. What an odd thing to call it. As I look around at the world I have to think, this is no ordinary time. In our ever changing and revolving world and the ever-changing events of our lives, how would we begin to say anything is ordinary?

Well, I suppose, unfortunately what has become ordinary is turmoil, distrust, hatred, lying and backstabbing. To me, what should be ordinary is love, togetherness, joyous community and the experience of living on earth as it is in heaven.

In 1940 Franklin Roosevelt was seeking an unprecedented third term as President of the United States. It had never been done before. We were still in depression, war had broken out in Europe and it was clear it would soon become a World War, most likely on two fronts. A major crisis. The country needed continuity of leadership during this time of crisis, but a third term as president had never before been done. How to proceed?

FDR did not want to go to the Democratic Convention and place his name in nomination. He was far too clever and far too much the master politician to do that. But he had a plan.

In the end he prevailed upon his wife Eleanor to speak on his behalf.

What she said to the convention that night and what she reminded them was that “this is no ordinary time.” It is no time to be complacent. We cannot afford that luxury. It is no time to let down our guard and isolate ourselves, but to move forward with the faith to do that which can be done and which must be done.

These times in which we live today are anything but ordinary times.

But I wonder. Was there ever such a thing?

You hear certain people, certain politicians, long for what they call the good old days. Days when they say life was simpler. Many of them long for what they call the status quo, the peaceful. They long for the 1950’s.

But the 1950’s were not so wonderful for everyone. Not so good in the 1950s if you are a minority. Many in the 1950s were living through a time of hate and distrust, a time of Jim Crow and lynchings. Women too were confined to certain roles and if you are gay or lesbian, forget it. You are considered to be suffering from mental illness. This was no ordinary time.

It was also into such a time that Jesus was born into this world. It was into such a time that he came to upset the status quo and proclaim a new order. But he didn’t do it without a cost.

The Christ was born into a time of crisis. The Romans were pitted against the Hebrew people and demonstrated their own brand of Jim Crow.

I can just imagine two Roman soldiers standing on the street corner of Main and Broadway in Jerusalem. One turns to the other and says, “It’s too quiet today. We need someone to start up some mess. But wait, here come two Jews. Let’s provoke them into something so that we can get our daily dose of satisfaction. So I can get some blood on my sword. So I can go home this evening and tell my wife I had a good day.”

Jesus was born into no ordinary time.

And even for Jesus the Jewish leaders, the Pharisees and the Sadducees were pitted against him. It was no ordinary time. Wherever he went and in whatever he did there were those who were ready to persecute and torment him. As events were to unfold Jesus very earthly world was forever on the brink of falling apart. There was that which needed to be done, but was there the strength to see it through? How was he to continue with his message of love, and peace and inclusion in this hostile and unpredictable world? How was he to continue with the cards of the deck stacked against him?

Jesus did what he would always do. He turned within to that place where he always found the fullness of Spirit/God.

Each time we turn within we find again that perfect love that always awaits our turning to it, recognizing it and affirming its presence in, through, and as our lives, so that our future moments can be filled with hope and possibility. Each time we turn within we know we are called to share this love with each and every person we meet. No matter who they are, they too are Spirit’s creation and they too are deserving of love.

The answer is to always come from the place of unconditional love. That, in a nutshell, is the gospel message. Each moment we live is filled with extraordinary opportunities to share love and comfort with others. Each moment is ours to grow and to learn and experience the fullness of all those things that make our lives truly the experience of living on earth as it is in heaven.

Each time we turn within we encounter an amazing Spirit that welcomes us, comforts us, lifts us up and sets before us wonderful blessings. This is how we get through this and every moment. This is how we become instruments to changing our world, one thought at a time. And this is how, one day, we will understand the true meaning of living on earth on as it is heaven.

One of my favorite movies, and I will confess to watching it at any time of the year, is “White Christmas.” You all know the movie. The producers went through the catalogue of Irving Berlin songs, created a flimsy story to weave them all together and created a classic.

One of my favorite songs in this film is “Count Your Blessings.”

When I’m worried and I can’t sleep

I count my blessings instead of sheep

and I fall asleep counting my blessings

When my bankroll is getting small

I think of when I had none at all

And I fall asleep counting my blessings.

This lyric has a powerful message and I have to think that when Mr. Berlin was writing it he thought back to his early days of struggle on the lower Eastside of New York City, living as an immigrant from Russia and just trying to get by day to day. In the midst of the life he was living at that time stopping to count his blessings had to seem a bit daunting. Daunting – but powerful.

Our recognition of our blessings is powerful. In the middle of whatever is going on in our lives counting our blessings can set for us a new course, one that before our recognition of those blessings was most likely unknown to us.

For me the truly amazing thing about blessings – and they can also be called miracles – is that they are all around us, but so often we fail to see them, to connect them. They are with us to lift us up and remind us of the unconditional love of God, but we fail to see those things that are right in front of us because the direction of our thinking has been so placed on the opposite. The struggle, the lack, the limitation.

I think that the biggest obstacle we have in life is our thoughts of fear. Fear is the very thing that will stop us in our tracks every time. Our default setting seems to be set to one of fear. We have become programmed this way by years of seeing life as a constant struggle. Fear will cause us to not do the things we think we want to do, it will cause us to question our own abilities, it will even cause us to imagine things that aren’t even present and we feel are working against us.

Fear will convince us that we are not enough, that we don’t have the abilities to succeed, it will convince us that our only way forward is to repeat our patterns of the past and that our future is just a carbon copy of every other day we have ever lived. Tomorrow will only be a carbon copy of today if our thinking about tomorrow remains the same as our thinking today. I love the saying, change your thinking, change your life. It’s true. What is the dominant direction of your thinking? Start by counting your blessings and the entire focus of your thinking will shift to a new and more powerful truth.

I firmly believe that the root of this fear is our feelings and thoughts of a separation from God. We think that there is us, and there is God and our life’s work must be to somehow connect with this far-away spiritual presence. Maybe if we do all the right things, say all the right prayers, maybe then we can convince God to bless us.

But God is not separate and far away from us. The God we seek, the Spiritual presence we desire is always right within us at this and every moment. What we are seeking has already found us and it dwells right where we are. Too often we fail to see and experience it because we have failed to look within.

Our prayers, our meditations and our spiritual work is to daily chip away at these fears that have been built into our lives like a self-protective crust shielding us from the outside world. Our own thinking has created a barrier to the good that we seek. We need to chip away at this barrier, this crust, and beginning by counting our blessings can be a powerful way to begin.

The wonderful and creative artist Michelangelo was asked how he could have ever created anything as magnificent as the statue of David. How could he have even imagined that out of some huge block of marble there could be this statue? What he said in reply was that he knew the beautiful figure of the David was right there. God had already created it inside that block of marble and what he as the human artist had to do was just chip away all that was blocking his view of that incredible reality. The David was there, waiting for him to reveal it.

The blessings of Spirit are within us, waiting to be revealed and recognized. Chip away at all that blocks you from the truth of who you really are as God’s perfect creation by changing your mind. You can begin by simply counting your blessings.

When I have starting counting my blessings I seem to find more and more things for which to be grateful.

You are blessed because God is a God of blessings. God is in the blessing business.

If God had a business card it would read: GOD. Blessing Business.

God loves you, cares for you. Hurts when you hurt, rejoices when you rejoice and God counts YOU as a blessing. Yes, God counts YOU as a blessing. What do you think about that?

Counting your blessings is a mantra. Counting your blessings is a meditation. Counting your blessings is a powerful form of prayer and counting your blessings is a form of stewardship of the things that God has given to you.

Seeing and thanking God for one small blessing reveals another and another and another. You are abundantly blessed, you may just not know it right now because you are looking in the wrong places.

Count your blessings and you will be changed.

A young man named Israel Beline on the lower East-side of New York City, a refugee from the pogroms in Russian, would start to write songs under the name of Irving Berlin. His songs would be about possibility, hope, and blessings.

Count your blessings, for God loves you, walks with you, cares for you, and always remember, God counts YOU as a blessing to this world.

“Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.” (Matthew 1: 18a)

After a lengthy account of the genealogy of Jesus the gospel writer Matthew begins to describe how the birth of Jesus came to be. This beautiful story reminds us of the humble beginning of the Christ. No one imagined that the long awaited Messiah would be born in a lowly stable and placed in a manger, a feeding trough. In Luke’s gospel he writes, “I decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you.” Luke then proceeds to give us a very different account than Matthew wrote. Put together, this is the birth story we often see in pageants and think about when we tell the story to others.

But there is another story of the birth of Jesus and that is the one of how Jesus came to be made known in our individual hearts and minds. This is the story that truly shapes our faith and our personal walk with the Christ.

We can meet the Christ again and again as we turn within and feel the presence of Spirit comfort and bless us. We meet the Spirit of the Christ anew when we let go of earthly limitations that speak only to our own abilities and allow the Christ to move us forward in ways we had never before thought possible. We, of ourselves, can do little, but with the presence and direction of the Christ unlimited possibilities open before us.

Later in the gospel of Matthew we read: “Many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what hear, but did not hear it.” (Matthew 13: 17)

We fail to see because we fail to look. We fail to experience because we fail to surrender. Jesus is born anew in each of us with our every thought and breath if we trust in the power of the Christ to change our lives. Celebrate today that the Christ is born again within you and that your recognition of this beautiful presence blesses you this day and always. With your every thought and every breath a new beginning awaits.

Affirmation: “Unlimited possibilities bless me this day and always as I allow the Christ Spirit to open my heart and mind with childlike wonder.”

“I thank God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you.” (Philippians 1: 3-4)

I watched the recent fires in Southern California on television. The Skirball fire in the Hollywood Hills was close enough to me that the ash fell from the sky covering the yard and car and creating extremely bad air, requiring the curbing of outdoor activities. Last Sunday I was preaching in Ventura, where the Thomas Fire had devastated so many homes and uprooted thousands of people’s lives. Consequently church attendance was low as people endeavored to put their lives back into some kind of familiar order. As I watched the television I felt helpless to reach out to minister to those I knew felt abandoned by God, challenged beyond their ability to cope and with deep feelings of being completely forsaken. All I could do was know for them, that was my prayer, knowing for them that God had not forsaken them. God had not abandoned them, and my prayer was that they would somehow come to know that they had a comforter who would see them through.

One of the most beautiful acts we can perform for another is to lift them up in prayer. It is something we can do at any time, in any place, and in doing this we can realize God’s beautiful presence not only in their lives, but also in our own.

In the midst of the “stuff” going on in our lives it can be so difficult to see the truth of God’s presence. I know this for a fact, for I have felt it on many occasions. Our burden can seem especially heavy, the path forward can seem unclear and uncertain and the pain we have feels as though it has come to stay. In these times, as much as I know God is right here with me, and that I am never alone, it can still be tough. We all feel like this at times.

There is such power in having others lift us up to God in sincere and faithful prayer. As others lift us up they can see beyond our concerns and burdens and they can see the reality of God’s healing for us. I have always found it helpful to know that another is “holding that space of perfection” until I can see clearly enough to recognize it myself. When we pray for another we have a wonderful opportunity, and responsibility, in holding that sacred space of Gods truth for them. In our prayer we are to be crystal clear in our own minds that the power of God is present and moving in this, and every situation. The more belief we, as the prayer, have in the power of God’s blessing, holding that space in absolute truth, the more we will be able to help those with whom we pray begin to see that truth as well.

My friend Rev. Amy Butler has written, “None of us ever does the work of the Gospel community alone.” How true, and how magnificent. With one another, and with God, the miracles we seek for another become a gift to us as well.

Affirmation: “The truth of God’s beautiful miracle is at hand. It is revealed to me perfectly and I am ready to receive it.”

“What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

How easy it is to look around our lives and see all the things we wish were different. As we concentrate on those things, and they become to dominant direction of our thought, those things we wish were different only multiply. When instead we stop, change direction, and count our blessings, giving thought to the things going well in our lives, we soon begin to notice that those are the things being multiplied. Through each positive thought, each positive affirmation of life, we are experiencing a powerful affirmative prayer. Not only are we thankful for all that God has provided, but we are saying thank you to Spirit/God for all that will be provided each and every day to come. We walk humbly with our God whenever we realize that through God’s grace we are blessed abundantly.

“Then the fathersaid to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’” (Luke 15: 31-32)

In the parable Jesus told about the prodigal son we find an amazing ancient story that still speaks so vividly and truthfully to us today. (I refer you to Luke chapter 15 if you wish to read it again in its entirety).

Here we have a story about a young man who decides he wants his inheritance right now, even though his father is still alive, and taking that inheritance he journeys off to experience life not only on his own, but left to his devices. From the very beginning we can see that he has set himself up for disaster. He is going to rely completely on his own abilities, hope that circumstances always move in his favor and take the gifts he has been given through the largesse of his father and throw away that with which his father has blessed him.

So what happens? This young man discovers that he is ill prepared for the world he has encountered. He is unable to use the gifts he has been given wisely and soon finds himself at the very bottom of life’s circumstances. From his life of privilege he is now so low and defeated that at last he begins to understand the lessons his father was seeking to instill in him.

So what does this story teach us for today? I would submit that it teaches us everything about the unconditional love of God waiting to be lived in and through each and every one of us.

I think we each have our “Prodigal Son moments.” Think about it. The amazing and lavishly unconditional loving presence of God is always available to guide, lead, inspire, nurture, support and bless us, but too often we begin to think that we can do it all on our own. Most often this occurs because we get distracted by life and the demands of daily living. Our focus shifts to what needs to be done in that very moment to surmount a challenge and instead of pausing to remember we are supported by loving Spirit, we move into “react mode,” where we respond with a kind of reptilian impulse that all too often just makes our circumstances worse. It’s not that we are bad or faithless people, it’s just that our humanity has at those moments overtaken our better spiritual self. We forget that with whatever is happening in life it is our right thinking, our affirmative faith and our positive actions that are available to us to move us forward co-creating new possibilities with the omnipresent Spirit of God. God is with us to inspire and be the energy and vibration that supports our being and doing, and it is up to us to remember that we can call upon this energy and vibration of Perfect Spirit and return to our place of rightful inheritance.

What this parable of Jesus reminds us is that whenever we choose to return to trusting and calling upon God that Spirit (like the father in the story) rejoices and receives us back. Each and every time. Without recrimination or punishment, but with joy and happiness that again we are celebrating this meaningful relationship. We may make this return to Spirit hundreds of times in a single day and that is wonderful. For each time we remember we are loved and blessed we can celebrate another victory and another homecoming.

I personally take great comfort in knowing that I can always bring my thinking and my awareness back to Spirit/God. I can always with a simple shift of my thinking return to a place of calm assurance that I am being blessed. Even the chaos of daily life becomes a blessed time when we remember we are never walking alone.

Affirmation: I know that through all the chaos life may present I can always return to the presence of Spirit/God right where I am at every moment and feel renewed peace, calm and happiness.

“TrustGodfrom the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen forGod’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; God’s the one who will keep you on track. Don’t assume that you know it all.” (Proverbs 3: 5-12)

“God can only do for you what God can do through you.” (Eric Butterworth, author)

I have a question for you. What are you really hungry for today? Sometimes we get hungry, like for that double chocolate cake with the rich chocolate icing and after two bites we wonder what we could have been thinking. Now, we hurt. Too rich, too heavy.

There are those things that we think will satisfy our hunger pangs and then there are those things that will be truly satisfying. If we are satisfied with what we can do for ourselves we have stopped really growing in faith. If we think that it is through our own cleverness, ability, or charm that our lives will truly have meaning then we are missing out on experiencing so much more of life. If we are satisfied with what we of ourselves can accomplish then I think we have some thinking to do about our life.

God can give us great insight for our lives and as well as insight into how we can make a difference in the world. God wants us to grow beyond that which we think we are capable of accomplishing. God wants to show us a newness of life that can only be experienced in completely trusting what God/Divine Spirit can do through us. The miracles that we experience in our lives are those wondrous things that are beyond what we had previously thought possible. But what we think is possible is so very limiting and unfulfilling. Spirit/God can open our eyes and minds with a consciousness to understand and experience so much more. Theologian Richard Rohr has written, “God needs to catch us by surprise.”

Trusting God to lead us and then being willing to “go there” with God can be a bit scary. Good. It should be, because it is taking us out of our comfort zone. It is taking us out of what has been the routine of the day and I bet, even if that routine has served you up to now, experiencing more of the fruits of God’s Spirit in your life would be welcome. So, good, step out of your comfort zone and see what God has in store for you. Because we are trusting in God we can know we are working with a safety net. Yes, along the way we may stumble, but we will be picked up, dusted off and shown even greater riches of Spirit.

Affirmation: “I delight in the many ways that Spirit/God shows up in my life. It is amazing what a change in focus and thinking can reveal.”